Peices - ***

Director uan Piquer Simón. Starring: Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Jack Taylor. 82 mins. 18 cert

Pieces is released on DVD (£15.99) by Arrow Video on 5th September 2011.

PIECES starts in 1940s American suburbia, in an Amityville-inspired house where a young boy is happily putting together a jigsaw of a naked woman until he is discovered and slapped by his domineering mother (are there any other types in horror flicks?). She starts shrieking repeatedly for a plastic rubbish bag to put the jigsaw in to throw it away, yelling he will end up “just like your father – the bastard!”

The kid, justifiably irritated, has a Norman Bates Moment, reaching for an axe and large handsaw, fortunately easy to find in suburban homes when they are more commonly located in meat factories), and places her head in the wardrobe. Cops then arrive, but everyone believes his sob-story of some “big man” committing the crime and he’s presumed innocent of the murder.

Fast forward to the early ‘80s, where a college campus is being terrorised by a killer who likes to hack up female co-eds with a chainsaw, placing their body parts very neatly in plastic bags. Obviously it’s Norman Bates Jnr all grown up, but who exactly is he now? There’s a menacing janitor who spends most of his time hewing down college hedges with the chainsaw, and glaring randomly at everyone, so here we have an insanely clumsy double bluff (presumably).

Director Juan Piquer Simon, who produced such classics as SLUGS and MONSTER ISLAND, crams this 1983 slasher with every cliché possible. There’s some unbelievably sloppy acting; for example, there’s a masked killer brandishing a chainsaw at you in a deserted gym, but this only causes you to look mildly bemused rather than terrified.

The dialogue isn’t much better, being crammed with so many Bgrade clichés it’s difficult to choose your favourite. “It seems a maniac is running loose!” bellows the principal, slightly unnecessarily, as another corpse is discovered. “But I don’t know the killer! Or…do I?” puzzles the vacuous student hero. Simon is so unoriginal he even rips off Tobe Hooper’s classic tagline: “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!”

To save the day, police officer Mary Riggs (Linda Day from BEYOND EVIL) is sent undercover on campus, masquerading (implausibly) as a tennis teacher. The killer, when not in Leatherface Lite mode, is still putting together the bloodstained nudey jigsaw (rather clumsily as he is wearing black leather gloves, not ideal for the job) while bumping off the remainder of the female students.

The dreaded ‘80s trademarks are all there: background music presumably trying to be creepy while consisting entirely of xylophone tinkling, plus wardrobes consisting of sloppy woolly sweaters teamed with legwarmers. Manual typewriters the size of small cars cram into offices, and everyone is slaughtered against a background of mustard shower titles, paisley curtains, and violent red and green furnishings, with more xylophones, only louder.

There’s sexism and racism that surely must have been dated even in the early 80s, with a close up boobshot and more shower/naked gym/leotard scenes than you can count. There’s a homophobic streak that means a character can be labelled cheerily as “a homosexual” and then have mentioned almost in passing that “her almost tried to kill me”. There’s also a “comedy” Asian student who appears for no other reason for what must have been intended as a hilarious scene when he attacks the heroine with kung fu, collapses and then blames it on “bad chop suey”.

There are some plot holes you could drive a lorry through: as Decomposing Mummy’s head was sawn off four decades ago, how can she reappear in a surprising fresh looking intact corpse? However, the last 30 seconds are unexpectedly good.

“But they still haven’t found the head!” someone wails towards the end of the film. No, and neither have they located a plot or any decent actors. This truly is a slasher that has the director’s professional reputation falling to PIECES.

Nina Romain.

GORE IN THE STORE
REVIEWS BY FANS FOR FANS
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH